The importance of school administrators’ cultural leadership in chaos atmosphere

Abstract

It is known that values and norms that are the key elements of organizational culture have a vital meaning for the organization. How a cultural leader shares those key values and norms with members of the organization is considered as a serious problem in today’s conditions. That cultural leaders make members of the organization to accept those values unilaterally is thought to cause chaos in the organization. Change is the most dynamic concept of our period. Organization culture should have a flexible and democratic structure for the administrator to interpret the change in the right way. It is thought that cultural leadership roles of the administrators are important for organizational change (Howey 1988; Lieberman et al. 1988). It is known that there are some problems encountered by school administrator while carrying out his cultural leadership roles. Increasing responsibilities of the school administration, lack of the opportunities to help to meet the educational needs of the children, demands of the private benefit groups and community groups are considered to be the reasons of chaos for the administrators. It is seen that educational systems all over the world have created new roles for school principals. It is thought that traditional features of school principals like knowledge, skills, competence and attitude are inadequate in carrying out these roles and responsibilities. It is considered that school administrators’ level of using their cultural leadership roles is important in understanding changing world. At the present time, schools have formed a living space towards new and universal values. On the one hand, the world is forming values and forms towards multicultural schools; on the other hand, it is dealing with problems that are out of the school principals’ control such as poverty, broken family ties, disabled students, students experiencing difficulties in preparation to join community and people considering violence as a lifestyle. In such situations school administrator’s cultural leadership roles are considered to help to understand this situation and the school would experience the chaotic situation at the lowest level. In this context, school should acquire the features of a learning organization. In this acquisition process, school principals have important roles to make organization culture have norms, symbols and a history that doesn’t resist changing.